


The Kinesis of Flight

by wisdomeagle



Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002)
Genre: Character of Color, College, F/F, Post-Canon, Wingfic, sport
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomeagle/pseuds/wisdomeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess is not a body at rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kinesis of Flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckle_berry (berry)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/berry/gifts).



Bodies

clothed bodies, hidden in yards of silk,

unspiralling, bodies clothed

in tee-shirts and pants --

eyes averted

with primal shame

bodies.

Still.

Pinky, unmoving,  
moaning.

Her sister's body shouldn't make those sounds and so she hid, then ran --

\-- she's always running.

Moving bodies make sense to her. They cease to be bodies and become figures in dance or sport or some more complex pattern, the warp and weft of life that make wars and civilizations and economies of power and movement --

\-- and the simplicity of her foot wrapping around a ball, torque and spin and grace, both sides splayed out on the pitch in stop-action moments, posing for the posters that will decorate girls' ceilings some tomorrow, perhaps her own daughter's, someday --

her body bewilders her --

its reactions, its desires, its fears --

except on the football pitch, where her body makes its own sense, where thought switches off and instinct takes over, where the catcalls of fans and the meaningless screams of teammates are silenced and she can only hear the football as it taps against cleats, thwacks off bound chests and addled heads, slides across grass and swishes into the goal.

"_Jess_!"

There's Jules of course, even on the pitch. There's always Jules.

"Coming with us after?"

Jess shrugs. "Not tonight?"

"Don't feel like... dancing?" Jules can wink without shutting an eye.

"No." The air is still between them, stale with unspoken things. "To tell you the truth I'm done with watching you flashing your skin in front of all the other girls and whoever else is clubbing with us, and I think it's a little sick of you, the way you show yourself."

"Really."

"Really, yah."

"You're being ridiculous."

Do you remember the night with the wings? Jess wants to say. Do you remember when we just looked in wonder?

"I've got a headache. I'll see you at practice tomorrow."

The other half of Jess's room is covered with half-strung fairy lights and half-finished drafts of term papers, and Amy has gone clubbing -- she will probably end up with the footballers who are still upright come three o'clock, and there will be a bitter joy in Jules's smile when Amy joins them, and they'll toss back beers together and Jules will pull her close and say, "Shall we dance?" and bite her bottom lip to repress a smirk.

Like the night with the wings.

Her body made sense that night, pulled close to Jules's in a dance that wasn't a dance but a seduction.

Jules was half-gone with drink when Jess managed to drag her away from the pub, and she skipped, gamboled, rambled about boys and football and exams and Jess felt the bottom of her stomach rumble like she was drunk herself, holding Jules's hand to keep her from skipping entirely off the sidewalk and in front of a lorry. And then Jules grabbed her other hand --

and they both pulled back and spun like children till the world went dizzy --

and then Jules kissed her.

Jules's wings were white and streaked with fire, and she kept losing feathers, every time she laughed.

"You're -- you've gone --" Jules slurred.

"Flighty?"

"Wicked," Jules said, and rolled her eyes. "Can I -- d'you think I could touch?"

It tickled, at first, and Jess said, "Harder," before she could think, and then, Jules stroking with the grain, it felt like jogging at sunrise, and _feeling_ the first sunlight as it struck her hair.

"You're shining," Jules said. "You're positively glowing."

"What colour are they?"

"White," Jules said. "And gold. And diamond-spotted. Like you, a bit."

"What?"

"They look like you. Like what you'd look like if you'd ever take off your clothes for someone. Me, for preference."

"You're still drunk." Jess let her wings ruffle, found the muscles to unfurl them, felt they'd been given her to escape, not to bewitch.

Jules kissed her again, and this time it felt like nothing, and Jules turned away after as if she'd been slapped. "You still won't see it, then? Even when it's bloody glowing on your back you're completely blind."

"Only, you'll _forget_ about tonight," said Jess. "I know you will. And you'll lie about it, just like you lied about Joe, and just like you'd have me lie to my parents."

"I won't!"

"Oh?"

Jess touched her ring finger to Jules's right wing, and a feather dissolved under her touch. She grinned. "You're melting."

"Race you to the quad?"

"Take off on three!"

Bodies in flight --

like bodies on the football pitch, they're tuned to sudden currents and shifts in the air --

to each other's turning and faltering --

Jules is molting, and something like starlight surrounds Jess, and blinds her. She finds her way home following Jules, trying not to laugh, breathing like she's swimming, conserving air for the final sprint, wings flat and coasting till they're in view of campus, and then she _flaps_ with more power than she knew she had --

Jules glows and dips and pirouettes and pretends she's the ballerina girl her mum prayed for, kicks her legs out behind her and does a somersault. Jess thinks she'll throw up, or maybe never come down...

and they land, both at once, a tangle of limbs and wings and laughter and kissing where only the stars can see.

Bodies made _sense_ when they floated, when they fell.

Jess lies very still on her bed and stares at the empty ceiling. There should be a poster there, Mia Hamm, maybe, something dykey, Jules whispers, and Jess rolls over, away from the phantom girlfriend who was never a girlfriend.

Something so that everyone'll know.

Like baring your chest for the world to see?

Anything's better than hiding in my room all night when I'm as young and hot as this! And imaginary Jules flashes her breasts (my tits, Jess!) and grins.

If Jess rolls any further she'll be actually on the floor, and she doesn't need any more bruises before practice tomorrow morning.

So she holds herself tense, shifts her back, searching for the muscles that were part of her body the night with the wings, and then lets out a sigh, careful and slow, when she can't find anything except a slight ache from a fall she took earlier, plunging too slowly after an easy pass from Jules.

She could have gone to Jules's dorm; Jules knows how to handle people, would have tossed her roommate out for the night and they could have -- been bodies together. She thinks of Jules's knee, permenately dented from fielding footballs. Her own thighs, Jules's hand on her scar, maybe, tracing, or kissing, and the skinny spaces between Jules's ribs, and the way they know each other on the pitch, instinct and guesswork and love.

She didn't. She went to her own room, clutching a handful of white feathers and glitter that she tossed from her window; they floated upward, and she slept, even, peaceful slumber, snored away her wings and all the magic.

Body's betrayal, and body's defenses. She slaps her leg, hard enough to hurt. She slides a hand up her leg, pretending it's Jules. She tenses her calf, and feels the pent-up power that will be released tomorrow, and stored again, and released. She flexes tensed fingers, and closes her eyes, and thinks about wings fluttering beneath her, and beery breath, chapsticked lips. Body's memory, and body's forgiveness.


End file.
